


Haunted

by DemonzDust



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark, Established Relationship, Fluffy Ending, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Jackson Whittemore Appreciation Week, M/M, Murder, Nightmares, What-If, teen wolf legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 19:03:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16024058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonzDust/pseuds/DemonzDust
Summary: Derek is haunted by the mistakes he might have made.





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> So I actually wrote this like three years ago, but never published it. I don't think it's really representative of my writing now but I fixed it up a little to share for Jackson Whittemore Appreciation Week and to check off a box in my Bad Things Happen Bingo.

Derek watches the boy's back.

He's tense and scared but ambitious and stupid. Very, very stupid. A boy that crawled into the den of wolves asking to be one of them.

"I don't understand." He says, turning back around to face Derek, "There's no one here...No one but us."

Derek fixes him with a stare and watches the realization dawn on his young face.

Jackson stumbles backwards and Derek lunges.

* * *

It’s messy. Messier than Derek had imagined.

Jackson struggles, tries to run, but Derek catches him. Knocks him to the floor. He cries for help and swipes futilely as he’s pinned down.

Derek could make it fast. It would be easier for both of them if he does, but he can’t. He wrestles with himself till the very end, hoping, praying, Jackson will be loud enough that someone will miraculously hear, that they will be interrupted, that something will happen and he won’t have to go through with it.

Nothing does. No one comes.

No one is going to save them from this, and when it dawns on him, it’s already too late.

There isn’t a single person looking for Jackson. No one knows where he is and Derek doubts that anyone would care.

In the end there is just the voice of Peter in his head. Telling him that Jackson is his mistake, his responsibility to put down. Living with the guilt would be his penance for putting his family in danger once again.

He plunges his claws into Jackson’s core. Hardened muscles are rendered to tender meat in his grasp. He clamps his teeth down into his neck and tastes hot blood and tears.

He covers Jackson’s mouth. Wishing for nothing more than to block out the screams. Everything in him wants to comfort the scared squirming thing beneath him.

The sick feeling in his stomach turns acidic as he remembers fantasizing about being over this body before. Sick.

He wonders if Peter knew that as well.

Disgust for himself making him noxious, he sinks his teeth deeper and tears.

When they're past the point of help, and it's just moments before Jackson’s eyes close forever Derek pulls back and stares into them.

He wants to remember this forever. Wants the image burned into his brain. He deserves this. To suffer with his mistake and watch the light leave his eyes.

They're green. They're terrified. They’re helpless.

And then, they're nothing at all.

* * *

Jackson’s body is limp in his arms. Dead weight as Derek carries him deep into the woods.

He has a spot picked out for the teenager’s final resting place. A small slope between two hills. It's quiet and serene. It’s not the kind of place that the boy would have picked out for himself. Jackson had a loud and high-profile sort of taste. He needed the eyes of all those present on him at all times.

But that’s why Derek had picked it. In the hopes that his body would find shelter and security between the thick trunks that would cradle it into eternity. That it would never feel on display.

He tries not to smell the subtle cinnamon scent of Jackson’s hair, his sweaty skin. Not to feel the warmth fading from his body. There is a blanket and a shovel waiting for him when he reaches the final place. He gently sets the body down on the blanket, and gets to work.

It goes much faster than he’s expecting. The black dirt and brown leaves yield easily for him and the body is laid down on it’s floor.

The body.

Derek can’t look at it.

His arms start shaking as he folds it within the blanket.

Piling the dirt on top seems like it takes hours.

* * *

Derek’s car smells like Jackson when he gets behind the wheel. That same soft cinnamon scent that turns his stomach and makes him feel like there is a piece of glass lodged in his chest.

He’s at a red light when he notices Jackson’s bag on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat.

The sight of it shocks him. He needs to get rid of it.

He should dump it someplace where no one will find it, where no one can connect it to him. No place comes to mind so he decides to take it back to his house and burn it.

But he doesn’t.

When he gets home he carries it upstairs and sets it down beside the thin mattress that he sleeps on.

Peter is in the house now, Derek hears him walking the various rooms looking for signs of the struggle. He knows Peter can tell the job is done. The blood has been cleaned, but the screams and horror from the act have been soaked into the walls. Joining the rest of the consequences of Derek’s actions.

Peter doesn’t call for him, so Derek assumes that he is satisfied.

He stares at the sports bag. It’s black with with the occasional swooping white logo.

He should really get rid of it.

* * *

It’s in the deepest hours of the night that Derek turns over, sleepless, and reaches for it.

The smell is driving him mad.

Plastic buckles pop in his fingers as he looks through its contents. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for, until he finds it. A red jersey with a soft white #37 on it.

He runs the edge of it between his fingertips. So much is rubbed into it.

Pride, hubris, ego. Anxiety, desperation, helplessness.

His fingers twist in the synthetic fabric, and his vision is blurred with tears.

He didn’t deserve this. He was just a lost and confused kid that had no idea what he was doing and no one to help him. I killed him. He’s dead because of me.

Derek’s body shakes.

He tries to remember why he’d done it in the first place. Just because Peter told him he had to? No. To protect his family? Yes, that’s what he’d told himself.

But he can’t shake the feeling, that the reason he’d done it, the reason he’d taken this poor undeserving lost soul out of this world, was something deeper. Something lurking within him. A weakness he can’t understand even though it’s a part of him.

He could have said no. He could have argued with Peter, but he hadn’t. He never did. He only ever did what was directly right in front of him. As if the path of his life was laid out before he was born and he wasn’t capable of straying from it.

No matter how hard he worked his body or how much he toned his muscles and honed his abilities, he would never be able to compensate for that weakness. Never make himself strong enough break from the path.

And now, another person was dead because of it.

He should have gotten rid of the damn bag, so he wouldn’t have to keep inhaling the scent of his abysmal failure, but somehow he still can’t get rid of it. Instead he finds himself taking it to his face as he tries to sleep, breathing in the scent till it invades all of his senses.

There’s something in the scent. Something distinctive of the boy that now lays in the cold lonely ground that makes it impossible for Derek to let it go.

Beneath all the resident layers of chemosignals that Derek recognizes as anxiety and rash insecurity, there’s a strength. A stubbornness, an unbridled tenacity and pure belief in the ownership of one’s own destiny that he wishes, more than anything he could take inside himself and make his own.

It’s that one attribute, that Derek knows he’s missing, and that’s the thing he can’t bare to destroy. Even if that stubborn drive is what got the boy killed, Derek knows that if he had only a little of it, he would have been able to stop this from happening.

He squeezes the fabric in his palms, wishing that he could do anything to take it all back.

“You’re hurting me…”

Derek is frozen as he hears the boy’s voice.

“Derek, wake up!”

* * *

Derek’s eyes fly open.

He’s in a one-bedroom apartment in London. There’s a soft bed lined with needlessly expensive sheets beneath him and an absurdly attractive young man untangling himself from his arms.

“Fuck, Derek.” Jackson wheezes, rubbing his arms as Hale finger-shaped bruises fade away from his flawless skin and he pierces Derek with a sharp stare. “The hell were you dreaming about?”

Derek swallows and looks away. Wills his heart to stop slamming in his chest.

“Nothing.” he lies, and Jackson raises an eyebrow.

“Nothing?” he repeats, letting the challenge hang in the air between them for a long moment.

He waits. Waits for Derek to clarify, to crack. To divulge the dark dreams of what could have happened had Scott not shown up that night.

Sometimes Jackson’s stare is enough to make Derek unravel, but not tonight.

Peeved at the lack of response, Jackson’s brow furrows. His lip tightens. For a moment he looks like he’s going to yell, but then he swallows, shakes his head and looks at the time on his phone.

4:38 A.M.

“Good talk, Derek.” he mutters under his breath as he kicks the blankets off his legs and stands up.

With that he stalks into the bathroom and turns on the shower.

Derek sighs the moment he’s gone. Rakes a hand through his hair and silently climbs out of bedf Picking his own phone up off the nightstand and slipping it into the pocket of his pajama pants, he steps out onto the the balcony overlooking the London street far below.

The brisk night air on the bare skin of his chest makes him shiver, but he doesn’t move back inside the apartment.

He knows Jackson has a right to be angry. He’s pushing him out, withholding things from him. Jackson isn’t good at expressing how things hurt him, so Derek has learned to pick up on the not so subtle clues. Angry Jackson is almost always just insecure Jackson trying to save some face.

But what is he supposed to do? Tell him that he’s having nightmares about what would have happened if Scott hadn’t been there to step in that night? Explain that they’ve been happening more and more frequently the more intimate their relationship becomes?

Sorry, I was just having another dream about murdering you.

That’s the kind of romance that everyone wants to hear. Not.

He sighs, picking his phone up and staring at the screen.

It’s still before midnight back in Beacon Hills. Scott would probably be awake if he called him.

But what would he say if he did?

Before he can convince himself not to do it, he’s dialing Scott’s number and pressing the cold screen to his ear.

Somehow, he feels like Scott will have the right answer.

“Derek?” Scott’s voice answers, slightly concerned. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Derek whispers, quickly glancing over his shoulder to make sure Jackson’s still in the bathroom.

Jackson would not appreciate Derek talking to Scott right after he’d refused to confide in him. But this is a special circumstance.

“I mean, no one is in danger.” Derek clarifies, and he can hear Scott closing a door to isolate himself from some background noise on the other end. “I just…”

Words begin to fail him.

“Everything okay with you and Jackson?” Scott guesses.

His and Jackson’s relationship isn’t a secret to the pack (or to any of Jackson’s Instagram followers) but Scott had been one of the few people that knew before they decided to go public.

“Not...really.” he confides. “He’s not happy with me right now, and I can’t say I can blame him.”

Scott waits patiently.

“I keep thinking about…” Derek starts only when the silence becomes more painful than speaking. “That night, back when you were first bitten, when I was working with Peter and he wanted me to…clean up...”

Scott doesn’t make him finish the thought.

“Why are you thinking about that?”

“Because if you hadn’t shown up, it could have went very differently.”

“It didn’t though, right?”

“That’s not the point. The point is it could have.”

There’s a long pause in which he can tell Scott is trying to choose his words carefully. Derek hears the squeak of the shower knob turning off and then sound of the blow dryer flipping on.

“I don’t think that you would have.” Scott finally answers. “I know you, and even at your worst, you’re not Peter. You’ve made mistakes but you’ve never intentionally killed an innocent person. I think that you would have realized that even if I hadn’t shown up.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“Derek, you said you’d kill me too that night - right before you threw yourself into a spray of bullets to protect me.”

Derek bites his lip.

“Is there a reason that you’re not talking to Jackson about this?”

“I...don’t know if I should.”

“If you guys are getting as serious as it looks on Instagram-” Scott says lightly. “I think you’re going to need to.”

“He could freak out.”

“Or he could understand that you’re feeling upset about this because of how much you’re growing to care about him.”

“Scott you don’t know him like I do. He never assumes that anything is because someone cares about him…”

“Then maybe you should tell him that.” Scott suggests. “Not beat around the bush with it.”

The sound of the dryer stopped.

“I-I have to go.” he whispered quietly. “But...thanks.”

“I’m sure you’d have told him anyway.”

“No, I mean, thanks for being there. That night, and now.”

Scott made an amused sigh.

“That’s what bros are for.” he says, dorkily. “G’night.”

Derek ended the call. His stomach is still in knots but there’s a small and growing sense of confidence starting to trickle through him and numb out the sick feeling. The kind of confidence that he knows comes from being backed by an Alpha.

Even an ocean away, he can still feel it.

“What are you doing out here?” Jackson asks and Derek turns to face him.

His hair is still dripping wet and he has a towel slung around his waist.

“I needed to sort something out.”

“It’s freezing.” Jackson shivered. “Get in here and close that door behind you.”

Derek humors him. He tries to touch Jackson’s arm, but the younger werewolf’s demeanor is every bit as cold as his skin.

“Come here.” Derek growls stubbornly, pulling Jackson’s nearly naked body into his arms.

This time Jackson lets him, albeit probably only for the warmth.

“I’m sorry.” he whispers into Jackson’s hair. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, I’m just…”

“Just?” Jackson prods when he doesn’t continue.

“I’m just starting to be really...invested I guess. In this. In us. And I don’t want to fuck it up like everything else.”

He feels the tension in Jackson’s back looseness a small fraction.

“The more that this seems like it’s really a good thing, the more I keep having these nightmares.” Derek continues. “I keep thinking about that night I lured you out to my family’s old house…”

Jackson broke out if his grip and turned to face him.

“That’s what you keep dreaming about?”

“Yes.”

“Why couldn’t you tell me that?”

“Because...I don’t know, sometimes you freak out about things.” Derek admits, although it’s a bit of an understatement. Jackson basically jumps at any opportunity to feel insecure about something.

“Derek, I was there too.” Jackson points out. “You aren’t dropping some kind of truth bomb on me with this, I remember that night just as well as you do.”

“But...it’s like what could have happened.” Derek’s voice cracks, miserable and pathetic in the dark room.

It was easier to talk when Jackson wasn’t staring him in the eyes.

Every other person he’d felt this way about is laying in the ground back in Beacon Hills, and every time it had been Derek’s fault.

“You don’t know what would have happened.” Jackson says, seriously before adding more lightly. “I probably would have outsmarted you anyway...assuming you actually had the nerve you claimed to. But in my experience your bark has always been much more impressive than your bite...”

“Please don’t try to make a joke or a kink out of this.”

Jackson tilts his head to the side, observing him acutely for a moment before pulling him to sit on the bed next to him.

“Listen.” he says, leaning his face in so that Derek can’t look away from his piercing stare. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? And we’re werewolves. We’ve both almost killed - or succeeded in killing - someone that we didn’t want to. You can’t beat yourself up about what could have went wrong. We’ve both got enough guilt to live with as it is.”

“But I can't control what my mind does when I’m asleep.”

“You can wake me up, though. Can’t you?”

“You want me to?” Derek frowned. “You’re...not always great when your sleep is interrupted.”

“I don’t want you to fuck this up either.” Jackson says, turning his face away.

That’s always the way it is with him. It’s all eye contact and piercing stares when he asks for honesty. Then avoidant eyes and deceivingly ambivalent wording when he expresses his own feelings.

But Derek has learned to read in between the lines with him. He knows what his repressed boyfriend is trying to express: This is important to me too. I don’t want to fuck this up either.

One day soon, he knows he’s going to have to press Jackson for honesty the way Jackson demands it from him. But not tonight.

His imperfect hands tightened their grip on his imperfect boyfriend, pulling him closer.

“Okay.” He whispers into Jackson’s hair, breathing in the scent deep into his lungs. “But I’m going to remind you of this when you’re tired and irritable at breakfast.”

“I’m always irritable at breakfast.” Jackson points out. “Not going to make much of a difference.”

Derek said, squeezing him tightly.

He doesn’t say thank you, because he doesn’t want to force Jackson into having to reply with an awkward you’re welcome. Instead he stays with him like that until the sun rises and they start their day together.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's the first of a ton of halemore fics that I wrote an age ago but never published (Derek/Jackson was my original Teen Wolf OTP). Thoughts/Feedback are always welcome. I'm thinking of trying to fix up a few other halemore things that have been gathering dust for 3+ years as well.


End file.
